


Kickback

by Sikeyouout



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Idk what i'm doing, More characters to be added, life's wack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:36:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18482971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sikeyouout/pseuds/Sikeyouout
Summary: Newton's Third Law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.Sometimes Wally wished that  physics wasn't so reliable, and that it didn't apply to other, non-force related aspects of his life.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first go around at a fic of any type.

So, admittedly, super speed had some unforeseen drawbacks.

 

Don’t get Wally wrong! He loved his power, loved the responsibility that came with it, loved the people it had allowed him to meet, loved fighting bad guys, loved every person he saved, loved every cat he rescued, loved the stress and pressure, loved the adrenaline high and the crash that came after, loved _running_ \-- but that didn’t mean there weren’t consequences.

 

There were the obvious ones that anyone who had any clue about the human (or metahuman) body would be able to guess, like the shin splints and (dramatically) increased metabolism. These were nothing special to speedsters-- well, maybe regular people experienced them to a lesser _degree_ \-- any high level athlete ate more than the average person and any runner, even those who did it casually or for fun, was bound to have at least an encounter with lower leg pain.

 

So Wally’s legs hurt and he was near constantly hungry, but this wasn’t anything mind blowing. Even at the tender age of eleven, when he had blown himself up in his parent’s garage, surrounded by chemicals he’d, uh, _acquired_ from the generous and incredibly unprotected labs at Blue Valley High School and Jayhawk Community College, he’d known that these side effects, and likely others, were pretty inevitable. Anybody who knew any speedster knew the outrageous amount of calories they needed to intake to keep standing, let alone run for prolonged periods of time.

 

But there with other effects, too. Effects Wally, with his very limited medical knowledge and excitement over the possibility of getting powers, had neglected to look into. Things his uncle never talked about to anyone but his aunt, that Wally only found hints at retrospectively when the same afflictions began for him. The average human body, the body Wally _had_ , before he was struck by lightning, isn’t built to go hundreds of miles an hour, to run non stop for a better portion of each day, to _exist_ at a higher speed than everyone else’s.

 

Of course, there are some ways to counteract these flaws. The Speed Force, the mysterious energy source speedsters drew their powers from, protected their bodies while running. It was the reason they didn’t get their skin sliced off when running just shy of the sound barrier and colliding with a fly or a particularly dense colloid. It was why when they tripped and tumbled across the asphalt they weren’t held back for days with road rash. It was why when they ran into walls (and sometimes very strong people) they didn’t shatter every bone on impact. The Speed Force is great, Wally would well and truly be dead without it, but it only protected speedsters from outside threats while running, not the damage they could do to their own bodies or what could happen while staying still.

 

Because even with the speed, Wally and his uncle had normal human bodies at their core. The speed, though thoroughly integral to each of them and their normal, everyday functions, was added long after their most important systems had been developed. It was like freshly laid sod, accepted by the soil underneath, but with roots not deep enough yet to change pH or water percentage.

(Because Wally isn’t stupid, at least not when it came to math or science, all bets were off for how long it takes for the speed to be fully integrated into his system, because it hadn’t even happened for _Uncle Barry_ yet.)

 

It’s not like he could go to his pediatrician for any of these speed related issues. He couldn’t really see any kind of specialty doctor, either. His body worked too differently from anyone else’s that he could reasonably predict a few potential things happening in the event he met with a physician:

 

  1. They would take his blood pressure an immediately ship him off to the ER, absolutely floored that he was even alive, let alone happy and (mostly) healthy, and he would have to make a break for it in transit so as not to let their questioning get any more out of hand than it definitely already was.
  2. Something to the same effect as #1 occurs, but instead they realize he’s a metahuman and ship him off to a lab to get poked and prodded at, and he ends up in some terrible facility for months on end and starves and dies because no one can find him (hey, he’s working worst case scenario here-- but with his luck, it’s something closer to only case scenario).
  3. Or something, again, happens to the same effect as #1, but instead they realize he’s Kid Flash, and share all his super-hero-super-secrets with either:
    1. The world at large, revealing his identity and effectively ending his career and life, or
    2. They decide they vibe with HIPAA that particular day, and instead share with the rest of the superhero community (bar his uncle, who already knows), effectively getting Kid Flash, and maybe the Flash, too, sidelined for an indeterminable amount of time
      1. Okay, since it would still technically breach HIPAA to out his secrets like that, maybe this one’s a bit of a reach, but he knows Bats is already suspicious of him and Uncle Barry, who knows what tipped him off, and the man certainly isn’t above hacking his personal medical files and then using that information against him.



 

That said, Wally’s current best option was to keep his health related needs between Uncle Barry, Aunt Iris, the Garricks, and himself. Both he and Uncle Barry wanted to keep fighting crime and saving lives, and they definitely both wanted to do that in the safest way possible, but they also both knew that if anyone on their respective teams found out, they’d both be booted faster than the blink of a speedster’s eye. It was also embarrassing, to be closer to being taken out by his own power than whoever the villain of the week was, and Wally already had enough embarrassing moments in his life, no need to add another. Oh, Artemis would _roast_ him if she ever found out, he’d never hear the end of it.

 

Every hero had a weakness, a drawback, an unfortunate side effect from their powers or their nightly activities. No one in the community was a stranger to this--bruises, cuts, fatigue. Black Canary’s sonic scream scraped her throat raw. Miss Martian got a monster migraine if enabling the mind link for too long or over too great a distance. However, few, if none, had kickbacks as severe, or numerous, as the speedsters, and absolutely no one could know that.


	2. Pressure

By and large, Wally isn’t a big plan guy. 

 

Sure, if given a plan, by Uncle B or his teammates or whoever, he’ll try his best to follow it as closely as possible. But, he also knows as well as the next guy that even the best laid plans can and will go awry if granted even the slightest chance. Even the plans of  _ the Batman _ weren’t flawless, as Dick had let him know after yet another encounter with Penguin or the Joker. 

 

Wally didn’t really have the patience to lay out good plans, either. He knows how to plan--it’s kind of a requirement in their line of work-- but that doesn’t mean he likes to do it. It is far easier for him to react real time, especially because he is so much faster than basically all of his opponents. He can see the other person’s movements as they happen, and counter or dodge faster than they can reposition. On the rare occasion he does have a plan, it usually only consists of assessing where he currently is, where he wants to end up, and a lot of optimistic thinking and willpower to make that happen. 

 

Uncle B is more into planning than Wally is. Uncle B is also the only person on Earth capable of his preferred brand of planning, if one could really call it that. Uncle B’s planning includes hyper-accelerating his thought processes and mentally running through every possible outcome of every possible action either he or his opponent could take, and then acting according to the best option. It is an awing concept to anyone who knew about that particular application of the Flash’s power, helps put into perspective just how fast the man really is, but Uncle Barry didn’t use it all that often, and Wally understood why. 

 

First, Wally knew how difficult it is to account for every variable in fight, and that focusing on something like that for what felt like hours to the older speedster is mentally exhausting, difficult, and incredibly boring. 

 

Second, there are an infinite amount of potential futures of the fight that Flash has to sort through, and even for the fastest man alive it is impossible to think through every single one of them in a handful of seconds. Wally had seen his Uncle freeze up in the middle of a fight while doing this admittedly very cool thing, and promptly get knocked into a wall by the Top, of all people. Yeah, it was embarrassing for everyone involved. While Wally was capable of thinking through a lot of different scenarios for a fight, he could not do it nearly fast enough to count while in battle. And, even if he could, Wally certainly did not have the focus that the task mandated.

 

So, plans weren’t really Wally’s gig. They had their pluses and their minuses, benefits and detriments, and some people loved to have them and others, like Wally, would rather not have too much to do with them. 

 

However, right now, Wally really,  _ really _ wished someone had a good plan, and that they could let him know what it is fast. 

 

The team was currently in the middle of the Great Basin Desert, fighting a group that called themselves “the Rewriters.” Wally wasn’t marking them down for any especially cool name points for that one, either.

 

Despite the less than stellar name, the Rewriters did pose a pretty significant threat. Batman had sent the team out to investigate their secret underground desert base early this morning. 

 

(On this topic, Wally has several complaints: 

 

To start, Wally is not a fan of anything underground, much preferring wide open spaces. Unlike Uncle Barry, Wally could not start and stop on a dime. He needed space to accelerate and decelerate. Without that, he ended up crashing into a lot of walls, and not only was that wildly embarrassing, it also hurt really bad. 

 

Secondly, the Rewriters are nuts. Absolutely crazy. Bonkers. Like, not only does the elevator not go all the way to the top, it’s filled with bats and burned out bulbs. There are 15 of them, all with decreased vulnerability and increased strength, obtained through some weird science that Rob had downloaded the files on to study more in depth, later, when they are all out of this terrible situation. The leader, an absolute bear of a woman named Missy Crown, had said that their goal was to “rewrite history” [hence the name, Wally supposed. Still bad, though]. Whatever “rewriting history” meant, it entailed building a giant bomb in the middle of the desert, and Wally, for one, didn’t want to see what they ended up doing with it.

 

Finally, Wally is not happy that this mission, this sucky, sucky mission, made him get up at four in the morning on a Sunday. Nobody should have to get up early on the weekend to do a terrible task when life would be much easier if he had stayed in bed this morning. 

 

Missions are great, on the whole, saving people and kicking butt, but this mission in particular started off sour and only continued to spoil as, inevitably, the initial plan went wrong and everything devolved into the chaos they are among right now.)

 

Okay, maybe Wally wasn’t bringing his usual optimism to the table today, but who can blame him? Superboy is fighting 4 of them on one side of the room, their cumulative strength an even match for his and their tactics far superior. Robin is in hand-to-hand with Crown, his combat skills effective but not promising against her apparent inability to be hurt by a punch or kick. Miss Martian had been taken out early, and Kaldur is protecting her unconscious form from three of them--his efforts were not helped by the very limited amount of water available. He currently only had the water from a 24-pack of Polar Springs that the Rewriters had when the team had busted in. Wally is deliberately not thinking too hard about what was in the bucket in the corner, if there was no running water in this bunker and the group likely spent hours working on this bomb at a time. Artemis’s arrows are working better than anyone else’s techniques, but she is wrestling one of them for her bow at the moment.

 

5 of them are standing guard over the bomb, a pretty smart move as far as bad guy ideas go, and the final one is pinning Wally to the floor, using his larger size and strength to keep the boy against the ground. Normally Wally couldn’t be caught in these situations, he’s too fast, but the bunker is only about the size of a half a basketball court--not nearly enough room to get up to good speeds and not collide with a wall. 

 

The guy is crushing his windpipe, Wally can’t  _ breathe _ , and none of his teammates are coming to his aid any time soon, all too caught up in their individual fights. So, he needs a plan, and he needs one now. 

 

_ Come on, Wall-man,  _ think. 

 

He knows he isn’t fast enough to vibrate out of the man’s hold like Uncle Barry can. He is fast enough to generate a lot of friction, which means a lot of heat. Maybe he could get hot enough to burn the man enough to let him go, but Wally is sapped of the energy required to do that right now. He cannot, unfortunately, bend his knees backwards and kick this man, nor can he thrust his hips up to buck him off-- the dude’s built like a truck, and Wally doesn’t spend much time weight lifting.

 

What he really needs is a second. He needs the man to be distracted for a second, he can even work with a half-second, just long enough for him to get out from under the larger man, knock him out, and help his teammates. 

 

Wally mentally thumbed through his options for distractions. Saying something weird and outlandish was off the table (he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak), he can’t pull a funny face (his oxygen deprived one probably looked silly enough on its own), his punches and slaps against the man are ineffective (again, with that pesky decreased vulnerability), and Wally is running out of ideas, when he spots something that sparks a very bad idea. 

 

Just off to his left, barely within arms reach, is a small, flat-head screwdriver. It must have been knocked out of the tool box near the bomb when the team had first busted in, but now it sat innocently on the floor, beckoning to him, and really, isn’t it his only option? Wally’s oxygen deprived brain leads him to believe that yes, it is. 

 

One of the kickbacks to super speed is an incredibly high blood pressure. Speedsters’ hearts beat much faster than the average human’s. At top speed and exertion, Wally’s can get close to 2,000 bpm. His physiology has largely adapted to this, so he isn’t at any major risk for a heart attack, luckily, but the physics of fluid still works the same. Meaning, even the slightest of cuts can be very dangerous. Even though he can heal fast, he can bleed out a lot faster. Scabs cannot easily form, as one might guess, when a large amount of pressurized blood is being shot out from under the skin the scab is trying to form on, no matter how fast one’s blood can clot. It’s like trying to put a 26-year-old Kroger brand Band-Aid on a fire hydrant that has been hit by the 16-year-old next door who just got his license. Sure, the platelets are on the scene in a matter of nanoseconds, but physics is physics and the speed force can’t break every rule in a speedster’s favor. 

 

Because of this, both Kid Flash and the Flash are very careful about not getting scratched or cut, in or out of uniform. It would look very suspicious, not to mention alarming, if a lab scientist or high school nerd had a veritable geyser of blood from a little paper cut. 

 

So yes, it is a bad idea, but it is also the only idea Wally has. A lot of blood all of a sudden in his attacker’s face? Anyone would be stunned enough to at least momentarily loosen their grip. Wally would just need to be quick to stop the bleeding, right? And he’s all about being quick. 

 

Hair-brained and split second decision made, Wally’s hand shot out and grabbed the screwdriver. In one swift motion, before the Rewriter could even register what was happening, Wally brought the screwdriver down onto his left bicep, then wrenched it back out. 

 

_ This is gonna hurt real bad _ . 

 

On the brightside, the Rewriter’s face when he gets hit by highly pressurized teenager blood is absolutely hysterical. And, it distracts the man enough that he lets Wally go, who is then able to push the man backwards and conk him over the head, effectively neutralizing the threat. So, one down, fourteen to go. Wally claps a hand over his arm, trying to stem the bleeding. 

 

_ Cleaning his uniform is going to suck _ . 

 

On the downside, the Rewriters guarding the bomb are less than thrilled about this, and two of them break ranks to rush him. Wally is down both arms, incredibly winded, and bleeding out. Time for backup. 

 

He races over to Artemis and the Rewriter she is grappling with, body checking her opponent into the wall. This dazes him, and Artemis, without missing a beat, knocks him upside the head with her bow. She and Wally stand still a moment to catch their breath.

 

“Thanks,” she breathes, rubbing the pain out of her ribs. Her eyes dart towards his left arm, but she doesn’t say anything. 

 

“Anytime,” he responds, pulling his goggles back over his eyes. 

 

Wally then takes off toward Superboy, Artemis firing an arrow at the two Rewriters who had chased after Kid Flash, encasing their legs in a thick, quickly hardening foam that stops them in their tracks, then turning her attention toward Aqualad and Miss Martian’s attackers. 

 

He body checks one again, slamming him into the wall. The other three pause briefly to assess the new threat, and Superboy uses that moment to throw a second onto the first, knocking him down as he attempts to climb back onto his feet. The remaining two split up, one lunging for Superboy and the other for Kid Flash. Wally side steps his opponent, but one of the lugs on the floor then grabs his ankle, knocking him off balance. The upright opponent then drops down on top of him, waling on his face, chest, shoulders, anything he can get at. Wally’s certain he is going to blackout when the man is hit off him by a wave of water. 

 

Aqualad stands above him now, face concerned, and reaches out a hand that Wally gladly accepts. He stands, swaying slightly, and Kaldur steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. He looks around. Artemis now stands over Miss Martian, aiming an arrow at the three Rewriters still stationed by the bomb. Superboy is charging toward Crown and Robin. The three grunts he had been fighting now an unconscious pile on the floor. Kaldur keeps his eyes on Wally, taking in the copious amount of blood dripping from his arm and the rapidly forming bruises on his face. 

 

“Kid, are you alright?” He asks, bending slightly to get a better look at his injuries. 

 

“Never better, bud.” Wally says, and even he can hear the manic buzz in his voice from the adrenaline coursing through his body. 

 

Kaldur clearly wants to say more but Wally darts toward the three bomb guards, and Kaldur turns his attention to Robin, Superboy, and Crown. Artemis hits one in the head with a blunt-tipped arrow, and Wally slides into the ankles of another. The third jumps on top of him, lands a solid hit to his nose, but is quickly knocked out by another arrow. Wally sits up and flashes the girl a thumbs up. She nods in return. 

 

Turning his attention to the Crown fight, he sees Rob gas her with a capsule from his utility belt as Superboy holds her against his chest. She struggles, and Wally gives her major props for staying awake for more than three seconds after getting dosed by top grade Bat-gas, but she does eventually succumb and pass out. Superboy lowers her to the ground and Robin zip-ties her ankles and wrists. 

 

Kaldur is on his comm. link, presumably calling the League to come pick up the Rewriters. He gives whoever is on the line a brief rundown of the situation, and then disconnects. The team takes a beat to breathe. It’s been a crazy mission. Wally checks his gauntlet. 

 

It’s only noon. 

 

He just wants to sleep. 

 

Wally slumps to his side, and the team rushes to his side. Artemis is there first, she was closest. Robin is a close second. 

 

“KF? You good?” The boy questions, his eyes swiftly tracking over Wally’s body, catching on the dark, bloody stain on his arm. “That’s bad. How much blood have you lost?” 

 

Robin starts to take gauze from a compartment on his belt as Artemis begins to apply pressure. Wally doesn’t answer his question. He can’t, really. His adrenaline high has come to a crashing halt. He hasn’t eaten since the ride over on the bioship. He just got beat around for close to a half an hour. He knows he’s lost a lot of blood, too much blood. He knew he would, when he stabbed his arm. It was the risk, and now he’ll face the consequences. 

 

He’s weary. 

 

He’s lucky. 

 

If his team wasn’t as competent as they are, if they were more injured than he thought, if the Rewriters had had something up their sleeves--the whole team could be dead because of his stunt. He incapacitated himself. He took himself out of commission on a whim. If the fight had lasted only a few minutes longer he would not have been able to provide support. 

 

Robin and Artemis are talking to him, but he can’t make out the words they’re saying. Guilt clouds his mind, blood loss limits his cognitive abilities. He hears other voices enter the mix, recognizes Uncle Barry’s. 

 

The League is here. 

 

Is M’gann okay? 

 

He’s picked up off the ground. His vision is growing blurrier. Fuzzier. The trip back to the cave takes hours. Minutes. Days? Nothing hurts. He feels sick. He’s in a bed, something cool in his arm. He’s going to vomit. The lights go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finals are over! 
> 
> Freshman year? Check! Calc 2 really put the drain on my brain. 
> 
> I'm not a health related anything (or writing, if it isn't obvious) major, so let me know if my facts are all shades of wrong. I didn't do much research on speedsters' heartbeats in canon, so the 2000 bpm was acquired through some pseudoscience and wishful thinking. If you're curious about it (or know a canon number), drop me a line in the comments.


	3. Vacuum

It hadn’t taken long for the League to figure out that a speedster’s metabolism burns through drugs just as fast as food. Only a couple of weeks after forming, the new team faced their first official threat-- Starro the Conqueror, a starfish like alien bent on world domination (but really, what’s new?)-- and Flash was hit hard and far by a powerful arm. The League was able to subdue the invader and return back to their base of operations (still the Hall of Justice, at the time, but the Watchtower was definitely in the works) for follow up medical care. Barry Allen, especially in his younger years, is not one to sit still for too long, so Batman gave Flash a fairly significant sedative, one barbiturate or another, so his ribs could be reset. About four minutes later and thirty minutes too early, Flash woke up screaming. 

 

(This was one of the handful of times that Superman noticed an external fear reaction from the Batman, and to this day he is still not certain if he imagined the man jump a little bit or not.)

 

Quickly following this event, Batman began synthesizing stronger anesthetics that could match a speedster’s metabolism. After Flash had recovered, the two had been able to design a few improved formulas, but neither wanted to try anything too far past that for fear it could kill Barry. 

 

So, yes, there are speedster drugs and speedster painkillers, but no, they don’t work as well comparatively as they did on non-speedsters. 

 

Wally wakes up in the Mount Justice med-bay in a good deal of pain. 

 

All things considered, it is not the worst pain he’s ever felt (a lot of things paled in comparison to being struck by lightning), but it is still not pleasant. He can feel an IV taped to his inner arm, probably pumping in nutrients he couldn’t intake while conked out, and the tell-tale itch of bandages wrapped around his left bicep. His nose aches, has definitely been broken and reset, and there is a familiar dull throb in his shins. His ever present hunger is stronger now than usual, leaving a hollow feeling like a band across his abdomen, creeping up behind his ribs. The room is quiet save for the soft breathing he can hear coming from the right side of his bed, and Wally cracks his eyes open to see Uncle Barry flipping through a case file. He’s not wearing the Flash costume, instead a pale crew neck and jeans, and he glances up when Wally turns his head towards him. 

 

“Hey, Kid, how you feeling?” He asks, closing the case file and dropping it on the floor next to his seat. He disappears for a moment, then reappears with a box nutrient bars and four packs of pudding, setting them down gently on Wally’s lap. Wally perked up immediately, and tore into the bars.  

 

“Right as rain,” he smiled, halfway through the first bar. Barry smiled back and let a light silence fill the room as Wally tucked away the rest of the bars. It is times like these that Wally is immensely glad that his mentor is who he is. Wally had heard plenty of stories from Rob about waking up in the Batcave and instead of receiving a hug and a snack or even a question about his well being, having to immediately debrief and assess what had gone wrong in the field and how it would need to be corrected for the future. 

 

(His best friend would call to vent at 4AM Gotham time, 3AM Blue Valley time, and Wally would listen, half asleep and sympathetic. Deep down, Wally thinks, Bruce cared for Dick just as much as Dick cared for Bruce, but someone needed to sit the both of them down and have them talk about their feelings.) 

 

Come to think of it, Wally really hoped he had slept through the post-mission team meeting with the Bat and Canary. He could only imagine all the things the Leaguers would have to say about the absolute mess the mission had devolved into. 

 

Uncle Barry, though, never got mad at him. Wally could remember the man being stressed or worried or annoyed, but he never put any of those feelings to voice before making sure Wally was okay. Uncle Barry is just so  _ good _ that Wally doesn’t know what he did to deserve him, or why the man puts up with Wally and his seemingly endless string of mistakes. Whatever the reason, Wally is forever glad that he does. 

 

Wally breaks off two of the pudding cups, offering one to Barry and keeping one for himself. 

 

“Some mission, huh? What happened in there?” He accepts the pudding, peels the lid off, then looks around for a brief moment before darting back into the room holding two spoons. 

 

“Same old, same old. A covert mission gone to shreds.” Wally swallowed another bite of pudding. “How’re the others?” 

 

“Fine now. M’gann was in here until about an hour ago--it’s three thirty, now, by the way-- and she’s resting back in her room. The others had a few scratches, nothing major, nothing a good long nap and some ice cream can’t fix. Speaking of ice cream, you want some?”

 

The two continued to converse in the same light manner for a while (Wally lost track of time) until Batman and Black Canary strode into the room and Wally felt his heart sink. He is immensely glad when Uncle Barry doesn’t give any indication of leaving, instead turning to look at the new visitors and smiling.

 

“Hey Bats! Dinah!” He calls, giving a small wave. 

 

Batman grunts in acknowledgement. Dinah inclines her head. They both turn to look at Wally. He swallows. 

 

“We are not happy with how the team performed.” Batman stated, and Wally doesn’t need to ask any clarifying questions. It’s obvious what the man is upset with-- the team had briefed him and he probably grilled more out of Robin afterwards. They were sloppy. They got hurt. The bomb was not immediately neutralized. They did not call for help until too late. They were divided by the enemy. They did not have a good plan. 

 

Wally tells Batman this. Barry shifts closer to him. 

 

“You’ll fix these mistakes in the future.” Batman states. Wally nods. Dinah finally speaks up.

 

“I’ll be working with everyone on the team more closely so that these problems don’t happen again. I don’t want any of you getting hurt.” Wally nodded to her as well. It sounded like the conversation was over. He leans back into the pillows, realizing how tense he has been for the duration of the debrief. 

 

“One more thing, Kid.” Dinah says, and Wally sits straight up again, faster than either can process. “Your teammates told us that you were able to turn the fight around, give an opening for everyone to get moving again, gain an advantage. Good work.” 

 

She smiles at him. Dinah is a fair teacher, but one that does not give out excessive praise. A compliment from her is serious, and Wally knows it’s not thrown out there on a whim. He beams back. Black Canary and Batman leave the room. 

 

“Ready to head home, Kid?” Barry asks, peeling off the tape and removing the IV from his arm. 

 

“Last one there does dishes!” Wally cries, and leaps from the bed. 

 

The rest of the evening is uneventful. Wally eats dinner with his Aunt and Uncle in Central CIty, then takes the zeta tube back to Blue Valley, and eats a second dinner with his parents. 

 

Mary and Rudy West are good people, and Wally really loves them, but they don’t understand the whole superhero business. 

 

They barely understand Wally. 

 

“How was your day, honey?” 

 

“Good, Mom. Yours?” 

 

They prefer the quiet life of a small town in rural Nebraska. Wally loves the high action thrill of the city. They believe in luck and folk tales. Wally believes in science and facts. They can sit on the porch and converse for hours. Wally can barely focus for ten minutes. These differences were apparent even before Wally blew himself up in the garage and became the fastest boy alive. 

 

“Dave Fletcher got elected to the school board. Might finally put some good ideas in their heads.”

 

“That’s great, Dad.” 

 

He doesn’t mention anything about the mission that day or the injuries he sustained. He doesn’t talk about how scared he was for his friends or how badly the day could have gone. He doesn’t ramble about the amazing flip sequence Dick pulled off or Artemis’ mind blowing aim. 

 

“Do you want any more chicken?”

 

“No, I’m full. Thanks.” 

 

In an ideal world, everyone is a hero, even if it’s just to themselves. Wally knows a lot of people who think the world they live in is like this. Wally knows different. Learned different, from his parents. If faced with the end of the world, Wally doesn’t think his parents would even try to save themselves, let alone other people. 

 

Some people have the heroic fire lit in them, others don’t. Mary and Rudy West, at their very core, aren’t anyone’s hero. Wally has learned to accept this. 

 

“Wally, it’s your turn for the dishes.”

 

“Sure.”  

 

Wally heads up to bed, and they turn on Wheel of Fortune reruns.   

 

“Good night, dear.” 

 

“‘Night. Love you.”

 

“Love you, too.” 

 

His parents are satisfied in what they know, and couldn’t care less about what they don’t understand. Wally can’t stop trying to understand everything. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story, Wally doesn't live in Central City, but in Blue Valley, Nebraska. I like to imagine he has a Midwestern twang to his words. 
> 
> Starro the Conqueror is someone I know very little about, but I think he was the first villain the League officially fought as the League when DC first developed their team. 
> 
> Also, I wanted to make his parents a little less ideal than they are in the cartoon. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, and as always, I'm just looking to make friends who love superheroes as much as I do.


	4. Tensile

True to her word, Black Canary trains the team more rigorously.

 

It’s been six days since the Rewriters fiasco, and she’s designed individual exercise regimes to help each of them improve in their weakest areas. Kaldur is doing speed training, because moving on land is a lot different than moving under water. He’s adapted very well to life on the surface, but more practice never hurt anyone.

 

Wally envies him. He’d much rather be running than going through his prescribed upper-body-torture work out. If he’s a little dramatic about, sue him. It really sucks. He never has to do this when he trains with Flash. On second thought, that could be what got him into this position.

 

Black Canary has him doing set after set of push-ups and arguably (objectively) too many reps on the punching bag. Scientifically, it makes sense. Biology may not be his best or favorite subject, but that doesn’t mean Wally is bad at it. Because of his constant running, his leg bones are unnaturally strong. The round-the-clock pounding and re-calcification of the bones has strengthened them so significantly that he wouldn’t be surprised if Superboy couldn’t easily snap them. It’s great, really, that speedster leg bones are so hard to break, because they’re near useless without them.

 

The problem lies in that his arms do not have the same strength. His arm bones probably don’t even have the strength of an average high school junior. Wally’s exercise routine has always centered on speed and endurance, never brute strength. Ideally, he’s never in physical contact with an opponent for more than a split second. In that time, he relies on body checks and the element of surprise to disarm or subdue them, never a strength contest.

 

Wally didn’t even know how to throw a punch correctly until he started his tutelage under Dinah. Uncle Barry had never taught him, and Wally is beginning to suspect it’s because the man himself doesn’t know how. He’d never once seen his uncle train his arms, and can count a frankly concerning number of times he’d had a broken wrist or forearm. Hindsight is 20/20, and Wally’s a little bitter that Flash isn’t next to him suffering through this right now, too.

 

He’s not entirely certain if she’s working him this hard because she knows his arm bones are so weak, or if it’s his slightly more obvious lack of anything even resembling a bicep.

 

Regardless, Wally struggles though his billionth push-up as Dinah watches him critically. This is largely his own fault-- he’s been slacking on weight training since day one, and she’s learned his tricks.

 

_If I pass out, I don’t have to do this anymore_.

 

The thought had crossed his mind more than once during training, but Wally doesn’t think he can handle the teasing he’d get if he fainted trying to do a push-up. So he keeps hydrated and well nourished for the duration of training, even if all he really wants is a nap.

 

On the bright side, Dick and Artemis are also on a strength-centric schedule so he isn’t suffering alone. Artemis is benching on his right, and Dick is pressing dumbbells on his left.

 

“This… _blows_ ,” Wally heaves between breaths, sweat dripping into his eye.

 

He hears Artemis grunt in response. Dick shoots him a grimace. Dinah rolls her eyes.

 

Across the room, Megan is doing endurance training. Though her telekinetic powers are phenomenal, the Martian girl doesn’t have the physical stamina to keep up with the rest of the team in combat. It’s caused a few too many close calls, and it seems Dinah’s finally picked up on it.

 

Prior to this Saturday, she’d met with the team as individuals and as a group to address what had caused problems in the past on missions, what they felt personally needed to improve on, what their teammates felt they needed to fix, and what they could be doing better as a team. Black Canary has always been open and upfront, never talked down to them or made changes that concern them without explaining her reasons behind it. It’s something Wally has always appreciated and respected about her.

 

Connor’s physical abilities are unparalleled, so today he works on technique. She’s had him running through proper fighting forms for hours.

 

About 20 minutes later and four hours too long, she calls training for the day.

 

“Hit the showers.”

 

The team has never moved faster.

 

While his five teammates head toward the locker rooms, Wally leaves for the kitchen. He desperately wants a shower, but he just as desperately wants a bologna, mustard, and Cheeto sandwich, and one of these doesn’t involve being naked around his teammates. Truthfully, Wally doesn’t have an opinion either way about seeing Rob, Kaldur, or Connor naked (has seen Dick naked probably too many times for it to be normal), but he doesn’t want them to see him.

 

Getting struck by lightning does not leave one without some pretty gnarly scars. Dark, arcing burns trace out a fractal pattern on almost half of his torso. The epicenter lies on his back, just below his right fifth rib.

 

(Rob knows this out of necessity. So does Roy. Wally had shown the boys his scars when they had first started hanging out as friends, rather than just colleagues. If he’s passed out from exhaustion or hunger, a swift hit to the place where the lightning struck his body will wake him up long enough to eat something. The Flash is the same way, though he was hit on the top of his left shoulder.)

 

Lightning isn’t the only thing that left a mark, though. He has significant chemical burns all over, mostly on his arms and front, from the veritable bath he took in the substances in order to get his powers. Though Wally is self-conscious about these scars, he’s more worried about the questions that would stem from them. As far as his team (save Rob) knows, and he’d like to keep it this way, super speed runs in the family. Wally _totally_ didn’t have to explode a garage to get his powers.

 

Wally trusts his team, he really does, but he does not want to take any chances on more people recreating the accident that gave Flash his powers or the subsequent recreation of that misfortune that gave Wally his. It was sheer dumb luck that Wally got super speed rather than dying in a chemical fire, and he doesn’t want anyone else to attempt the experiment and get hurt. Or worse.  

 

He knows he’s good at science and had an over indulgent uncle, but if an eleven-year-old was able to reproduce the incident that gave the Flash his speed, just about anyone could. After he had started training as Kid Flash, he and Uncle Barry made a pact to hide all the lab notes Wally had made in his speed-garnering endeavors. They divided the notebooks evenly between the two of them and Aunt Iris, then dashed off across the country and across the globe to hide them from the world and from each other. Now, only if all three of them are in agreement that it’s necessary can the complete set of notes be put back together.

 

So, Wally tries not to open that door of possibility to anyone, even his best and closest friends. All it takes is one person to make an off hand comment to another, and the first domino of the catastrophe chain has been tipped. He’d rather not risk it.

 

In addition to the disfigurements he received from his garage stint, Wally’s got the scars every hero gets from a fight. Only, his are a lot uglier. Because he heals so quickly, hypertrophic scarring litters his whole body, puffy and pink and not going anywhere. His most recent screwdriver mark is shiny and prominent on his upper arm, just another painting in a gallery. Even though he has the same number of mission related injuries as anyone else, his look significantly worse because of the way his body treats damage, and Wally could do without the stares.

 

Finally, his feet are absolutely disgusting. His constant running never gives them any time to heal. At any given time, two or more toenails are missing, blisters and bruises line his heels and arches, and his small toe on either foot is permanently bent inward from colliding with the inside of his shoe when he skids to a stop. Common problems for most runners raised to an extreme because of his persistent need to run, and the very short amount of time he rests in between.

 

Long story short, while Wally really wants a shower right now, he really can’t have one.

 

He’s finished his third sandwich and is on his fourth banana when Connor comes in, hair dripping water down his neck. He stops in the doorway and crinkles his nose.

 

“You stink,” he says flatly, leveling Wally with a disgusted look.

 

“Rude,” Wally responds, shooting the banana peel into the garbage. “How do you feel about composting?”

 

Connor pauses a moment, considering. Maybe it’s because of how he came into this world, maybe it’s because of his sub-par social skills, but Connor never got annoyed by Wally’s seemingly random shifts in conversation.

 

“I don’t really know much about it,” he finally answers, moving to open the refrigerator and pulling out a carton of orange juice. Wally pulls two glasses from the cabinet behind him, and sets them down on the island.

 

“I think we should look into it. I bet you’d love gardening.”

 

“We live on a beach.” He fills the two glasses and replaces the carton.

 

“ _In a_ _volcano_ , dude. You know volcanic soil is the best, and a little decomposed food is only going to make that better.”

 

“This isn’t a volcano. The only ‘soil’ around us is sand.”

 

“We can get some soil from the Home Depot and put it in pots outside. Be the change you wanna see in the world, bro. Grow tomatoes.”

 

“Tomatoes are nasty,” pipes in a new voice. Robin enters to lean on the island, sunglasses firmly in place and hair messy from a quick towel dry. “Go for potatoes. We can make french fries.”

 

“You just have the palate of a seven year old.” Wally teases, then turns to Connor seriously. “But potatoes are a really good idea.”

 

Connor shrugs. The easy conversation continues as the rest of the team filters into the kitchen, seeking snacks and companionship after a grueling training session. A long while passes before Wally checks the time and does a double take, realizing he was supposed to meet with his aunt and uncle fifteen minutes ago. He says a quick goodbye and darts off, leaving the others to laugh and joke about the fastest boy alive being late. If only they spent any real time with the Flash.

 

Comparatively, Wally’s early.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

Late that night, Artemis can’t sleep. An unsurprisingly common occurrence in her life. She rolls back and forth, tossing and turning, until she groans and reaches for her phone.

 

She opens up the messaging app, then pauses. Robin definitely won’t respond, being in the middle of patrol with Batman as he undoubtedly is. Megan sleeps like the dead, Connor never has his phone on anything but silent, and Kaldur is in Atlantis tonight, visiting with King Orin for an update on underwater diplomatic affairs. Her carrier definitely doesn’t reach to the bottom of the ocean. She really isn’t close with anyone from school-- only has one or two of her classmates saved in her contacts.

 

This leaves Wally. He’s probably awake doing something geeky, and she knows he wouldn’t mind a text from anyone at any hour, but their friendship isn’t as natural as his is with the rest of the team. She feels weird about messaging him about personal problems. Then again, all she really wants is a conversation.

 

Artemis thinks for a few minutes, puzzling through neutral topics she could start with, before typing.

 

**To:** Kid Mouth

Ur really not that strong, huh?

 

Not more than 4 seconds pass before she sees three tell-tale dots indicating he’s typing back a response.

 

**From:** Kid Mouth

Are you rly going to cyber bully me at, McFrickin’, 12:34 in the morning????

 

**To:** Kid Mouth

im just stating the facts

And I have a point

 

She does. Black Canary’s new training has really revealed to her Wally’s complete lack of strength, despite being a meta.

 

**From:** Kid Mouth

Please get to it

 

Though she’d never outright admit it, Artemis knows she’s not the smartest person on the team. In fact, she’s probably further down the intelligence roster than she’d care to really think about. But, something’s been nagging at the back of her mind for almost a week now.

 

**To:** Kid Mouth

It’s just, weight training this past week has really showed that u can barely lift urself

Not to mention another person

 

**From:** Kid Mouth

:/

 

**To:** Kid Mouth

how’d u lift that rewriter last week??

like, i saw u totally pinned

and then he stabbed u?

 

She sees the dots appear then disappear 3 or 4 times, each successive one with a longer time interval in between. Then they stop appearing altogether. When he doesn’t respond within the minute, she switches over to Twitter.

 

Ten minutes later and thirty-five posts deep on a self care account, she finally gets a reply.

 

**From:** Kid Mouth

uh, i guess i just got lucky

 

Twenty seconds pass.

 

**From:** Kid Mouth

I gotta go. I have a lab report i need to write.

 

Weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drink some milk and take a walk in the sun sometime soon, if you can! You need the vitamin D to get the milk to do it's job in strengthening your bones, and you need the exercise for anything to actually happen. I make a lot of things up in regards to speedsters, but this is actually real life true. take care of yourself. 
> 
> I'm, like, 10% sure revival by hit to lightning scar is canon somewhere, but I really am not sure. 
> 
> two notes on food in this chapter:  
> 1\. I have never tried the sandwich Wally eats (I don't like mustard), but I figure he'd eat just about anything. Let me know if you've had anything like it and if it's good or really, really bad.  
> 2\. I hate tomatoes, but again I figure Wally eats anything so he probably likes the nasty fruits. 
> 
> as always, just looking for friends :)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for sticking around for the ride.


End file.
